


there's no else who i know how to be

by annperkinsface



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-24
Packaged: 2018-05-28 18:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6340549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annperkinsface/pseuds/annperkinsface
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The girl across from you smiles, knife sharp, and not even your own reflection could prepare you for how disconcerting that would be.</p><p>(Elektra versus Elektra.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	there's no else who i know how to be

i.

"To know your enemy is to know yourself," Stick says.

You sit up, gingerly, refusing to lie spent on the floor while Stick lords over you, not even out of breath. You'd been sparring and he'd been infuriating, even more than usual. Sloppy, he'd scoffed; weak. It just riled you up more.

You wipe blood off your mouth. More than just your pride is stung. "I know who I am."

He gets that look he sometimes does, the one you hate, the one you can't for the life of you understand - -

"You know jack shit," Stick says. "Especially about who you are."

 

 

  
ii.

There's a ritual, of course. Chaste magic, the same kind that lets them talk into each other's heads, and smoke that itches your nose and wisps towards the ceiling while you sit and meditate, reach deep, deep within the well of yourself and struggle not to come up empty.

"There's no room for doubt," Stick says, at the start. "Not here. Not with the forces we're working against."

"I don't doubt," you say, stubbornly.

"You can lie to me, Ellie. But can you lie to yourself?"

 

 

  
iii.

"Hello, Ellie." The girl across from you smiles, knife sharp, and not even your own reflection could prepare you for how disconcerting that would be.

"Are we going to talk?" you ask, boredly, but your heart is threatening to race out of your chest. You're thrilled and frightened beyond measure. "Or are we going to fight?"

The girl tuts. "Haven't you heard good things come to those who wait? Oh, but you're desperate to prove yourself, aren't you? To mean anything to anyone at all." She sighs, sadly. "Oh, Ellie."

The rage catches you off guard, the _loathing_. "Don't call me that."

She laughs, this girl who-is-and-isn't-you. "Why? Because dear old Stick does? I am you, darling. That's kind of the point."

You slash at her with your sai. You don't just want to make her stop; you want to make her bleed.

What does that say about you, exactly?

 

 

 

  
iv.

She pins you with a foot to the chest, laughs into your sweat drenched face. "He doesn't love you, you know," she says, conversationally. "Not really."

"Shut up," you grit, snapping your leg out, but she dances away, laughing, always laughing.

"You believe in him," she says, spinning back in. Their steel clashes and you grit your teeth. "But he doesn't believe in you."

You thrust your sai upwards, managing to graze her cheek. Blood drips, but satisfaction is fleeting, not when the monster with (in) your face is grinning, laying you wretched and ugly and bare.

"How could he? You can't believe in something that isn't there."

 

 

 

v.

It could have been hours. It could have been days.

 _Feel no pain_ , you had learned, but you feel like you're being flayed alive, every second, every poisonous word to drip from her lips.

You drive your sai through her heart and watch your other self gurgle up blood, smile at you through bloodied teeth.

"You can live for his mission. You can die for it. But he'll never love you. No one will."

You snarl and twist your sai in further, eyes wet and teeth bared, and you hate her, you hate her, you hate her - -

 

 

 

 

 

vi.

You come to and Stick is by your bedside, expression shuttered.

"You failed," he says.

"I won." Breath rasps angrily through your teeth. "I _won_." You did what he taught you. What else were you supposed to do?

"You lost, Ellie," he says and you want to close your eyes and never open them again.

 

 

 

vii.

Maybe, you think, it's what, not who.

What are you?

Isn't that the question?


End file.
